Framework to achieve 16 Pomodoro in a day
In this article, I will focus a little bit on the Pomodoro technique and then discuss how I achieved 16 Pomodoro/day.
The content will be useful for people who want to enhance their day’s productivity without losing focus.
After following the steps mentioned here anyone can achieve a benchmark number of Pomodoro in a day which not only enables them to complete their work but also let them achieve it more effortlessly.
I have been following the Pomodoro technique for more than 4 years now. I have started with 8 Pomodoro/day and currently, I can achieve 16 Pomodoro/day easily. Since childhood, managing time to get the maximum out of it is my deep interest and that’s why I have tried different frameworks of productivity.
I have come across this Pomodoro technique from one of the Trello blogs. After I heard about this technique I get really interested in it because of the following reasons:
- It advocates sitting for only 25 minutes in one stretch
- It has a clear set of metrics i.e. how many Pomodoro one should complete in a day to make sure that the day is a productive one
- It talks about process rather than the goal and advocates that by following the process anyone can achieve any goal
When I started, I used to complete 8 Pomodoro in the day. I also knew that I should ideally be completing 16 Pomodoro in a day. Completing 16 Pomodoro in a day can give me around 8 working hours which is an ideal number of working hours to make your day highly productive.
No matter how much I tried, I never reached that point in 2018 — the year I started this practice. After that, I left this practice for some time. I again started with the Pomodoro technique when I started living a more disciplined life. This was basically started when due to covid I stopped going to the office. Since I was saving a lot of time because of no commute, I thought of utilising the time in increasing my Pomodoro count.
This time I followed the slow incremental approach of reaching 16 Pomodoro. Initially, I started making myself comfortable with 10 Pomodoro. This took around 2–3 months. Then I increased it to 11 and practice that again for 2–3 months. I kept following this approach till I reached 14 Pomodoro. Increasing after 14 was a challenge because finding time after 14 Pomodoro in a day was tough. From here onwards I have to make myself more disciplined, so I made sure that I will start my day at 10 am to complete 6 Pomodoro by 1 pm. Then start again at 2 pm and try to complete another 10 Pomodoro till 7 pm.
There are some days in which things don’t go as planned so I have to stretch a little bit post 7 or I start the next day at 9:30 or I use the 1 pm to 2 pm break. In any case, the idea was that the working day (Monday to Friday) average should be 16. If things fall short, I utilize the weekend to maintain the average of 16 but this is not recommended.
With practice and consistency, I have achieved the desired number of Pomodoro and believe the same can be achieved by anyone. Frankly speaking, I now try to achieve 14–15 Pomodoro only as that serves my purpose but I can scale that to 16 if required anytime.
Few last tips to achieve a benchmark number of Pomodoro. You should not over-stress yourself to achieve 16 Pomodoro quickly. Take your time to come to that number. You can have some off weeks as well but make sure you start your upcoming week without any guilt. On a side note, I should give some credit for my disciplined life to my wife as well as she takes care of a lot of household work.
Do let me know how many Pomodoro you think should be completed in a day and why in the comment box.
I write more such life lessons based on my experience on Twitter.
